Talk:History of Microsoft Windows

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article is part of WikiProject Microsoft Windows, a WikiProject devoted to maintaining and improving the informative value and quality of Wikipedia's many Microsoft Windows articles.

Contents

[edit] Windows Line or Windows Family?

OR

Anyone?Eshcorp 20:41, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Windows Server Longhorn???

It appears that no one noticed that windows vista was originally called lonhorn back in '05.

[edit] VMS heritage

The article says, "DEC also believed he (Dave Cutler) brought Mica's code to Microsoft and sued. Microsoft eventually paid $150 million US and agreed to support DEC's Alpha CPU chip in NT." I haven't changed the main article yet, but if there are no objections, I'd like to replace "Mica's code" with "VMS's kernel architecture" or something similar. -- jdcope, 24-Jan-2005

[edit] First popular version?

The article says:

The first really popular version of Windows was version 3.0, released in 1990. This benefited from the improved graphics available on PC's by this time, and also from the 80386 processor which allowed 'true' [[multitasking]] of the Windows applications

I'm pretty sure this is wrong (although not quite sure enough to make the change myself). Windows 3.0 had a real mode (for any PC) and a standard mode (for 286 or higher). It had no special provision for the 386. Windows 3.1 dumped real mode and added 386-enhanced mode. One of the things that made Windows 3.0 so popular was that it allowed extended memory to be put to good use (assuming you had at least a 286). --Zundark

Before Windows 3.0, there was a separate "Windows 386" version of 2.0, but 3.0 did indeed fold that code into the main product, which used a 386 if you had one; otherwise it used the 286; it fell back to "real mode" only as a last resort, or when specifically invoked that way (which people did to run it as a task under DesqView or something). 3.1 dumped real mode as you say, and added some extra 386-specific code.

The only thing I might change here is that the phrase "true" multitasking is misleading. Most Windows applications at the time were still 16-bit applications, which still used the cooperative multitasking of earlier Windows versions rather than the full pre-emptive multitasking available to 32-bit apps. --LDC

The article implies that most of the code was written by microsoft. Is this a true statement? I thought most of the underlying code was ripped from BSD and other 'free to be copied' Unix variants. -- mike dill

Urban legend, I'm afraid. Lots of people would like to believe Microsoft is stealing people's code, but they aren't. Some code wasn't MS original, but they licensed it legally from the appropiate corporations. Also, 'free to be copied' is a vague term... The BSD license requires credit to be given in freely available source code. Windows doesn't provide source code, thus the BSD license can't be used to borrow code. --Colin dellow
Not true -- BSD license only ever required acknowledgment in documentation; there was no requirement to provide source code. And the University of California has since revoked the acknowledgement requirement (along with several others who used the same license for their own code), so anyone can use BSD in their propepriatry software without any acknowledgment. Microsoft could legally put BSD code in their own software, and they don't legally even need to tell anyone. But nonetheless I doubt they actually have, to any significant extent. -- Simon J Kissane

Microsoft definitely has used plenty of BSD code in Windows, particularly in the networking stuff. This came up recently in 2001, I think it was on Slashdot. With credit, though. You can find the copyright strings for University of California in a number of EXEs and DLLs. --Alan Millar

Absolutely. For example, I believe the Windows command-line FTP client is pretty much a direct port of the BSD code.

Mentioned 3.1 as an upgrade from 3.0 that added multimedia/cdrom support. A stopgap extension was available for 3.0 to provide that functionality before 3.1 was released, but I don't know if thats important enough to mention. I might have insinuated the upgrade was about only multimedia... --alan D

No mention of the non-reentrantcy of dos as a major limiting factor affecting windows 1 through windows me perforance.

The whole tone of this article is strange for an encyclopedia. I'm all for M$-bashing, but in its place.

I concur. What in hell does "ME is very unstabe and the Microsoft Corproation apologises to anyone who bought the proguct" mean?

Article read:

In late 2001 Window XP was released in two versions Windows Xp profesional (built on Nt engine) and Windows Xp Home eddition (built on Windows 9x engine) Windows XP pro has been proved to be the most stable operating system of all time. (excludin linux) Microsoft has proven to been very effective at marketing its products. One of the results has been that Microsoft has changed product names to induce consumers to think that the technology has changed more than it really has. As of the year 2001, all of Microsoft's operating systems have come out of the same two lines of technology: MS-DOS and OS/2.

Not only is this badly written and shows anti-Microsoft bias, it also is factually incorrect -- both editions of Windows XP are built on a Windows NT core. There may be some code from Windows 9x in there as well, but the base OS is all NT. -- SJK

The OS/2 product line shows versions 1.0 and 2.0, but doesn't mention versions 3.0 and 4.0. Should those be mentioned here, or are they irrelevant to the article since they came out after IBM and Microsoft stopped working together? Thought it might be worth mentioning that OS/2 3.0 came out in 1994 in an attempt preempt the release of Windows95; I think that 94-95 period was probably its heyday, or as much of a heyday as it ever had. --Wesley

2002-04-27: In response to the above, I have a added a few lines about OS/2 version 3.0 and some of the possible reasons that are commonly put up why it failed. Hopefully it is not considered too biased... I also tried to clean up much of the duplication between this page and the OS/2 page and added a more obvious link from that page to here. -- djmutex

It seems odd to me that such a lengthy article on this topic includes no mention of the term "monopoly". Are the business/societal ramifications of Windows' history so insignificant compared with the specifics of technical development and (marketing-driven) naming/feature progression?

We need some WinCE history here. --k.lee

This is a fine article. We could add Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to stay current. BF 14:44 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

I'd like screenshots of Windows 2.0 and 3.0, if it's possible to include them under our copyright policy.

[edit] brief discussion of OSR2?

article completely ignores OSR2, which did have a few significant enhancements versus 95 (FAT32, USB, mostly 32-bit code in the file system, DMA support on IDE, ...)

from the "core OS" perspective, OSR2 had basically everything 98 had less the new Explorer.

I would call this the bowdlerized version of the history of Windows. Where is the part where Microsoft used the Win95 launch and a minor payment dispute to force IBM to drastically curtail their support for OS/2, Smart Suite, Lotus, etc. Here is a clear clue in this URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/06/10/cut_a_deal_or_you/

Microsoft was determined to kill anything that competed with Win95 and Office, and they were not above using monopoly power to do it.

[edit] Included Several Enhancements

I've just added several new areas, and just generally tidied up the listing. I believe it's accurate, but as always, feel free to point out inaccuracies.

I'll have a look at including Windows CE, and Other Windows XP versions, such as Tablet PC, and Media Center Edition

[edit] Disputed

"I want Mac on a PC, I want Mac on a PC" and the statement that they created Windows only because of the Mac is quite a pro-Mac POV, and I don't think this is accurate. There were other GUIs around at the time, like GEM. Though Microsoft was definitely influenced by the Mac (who in turn were influenced by Palo Alto), I don't think this is the first story here, and not NPOV. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:56, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This was pointed out on IRC that it came from http://www.hsconnexion.com/zine/article.php?a=372. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:04, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Release date of 3.1

When was 3.1 released? 3.11? Mr. Jones 10:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How many?

Do we know how many copies of the various Windows systems were shipped? Rich Farmbrough 20:56, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links I found when researching Windows 2000

Here are some useful links I found, you might want to consider them for this article:

Anyway, hope this helps a bit. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:08, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Where is Windows 95?

I could be missing something here, but I find it extremely odd that there is no subsection dealing with Windows 95 which is arguably the most important release of Windows that Microsoft was put out to date. Suggest that someone familiar with the topic add a section for Windows 95 before "Windows NT 4.0" and add some background/history related to the OS and it's release.

[edit] Windows 95/98 and 1GB RAM

The statement that these OSs won't run on more than 512 megs without "obscure registry tweaks" is incorrect, and seems to be a continuation of a series of myths that they couldn't handle more than various amounts of memory, that first seem to have cropped up referring to "more than 64MB" when that was considered a lot of RAM. My current system is still running 98SE on 1 gig. A small change is beneficial to the vcache section of system.ini, nothing else is required.

  • There were several popular motherboard chipsets that failed with the way Windows 95 handled memory. It was clearly a failure with those chipsets, but was the source of the "Windows 95 doesn't handle more than 64mb of memory." There were large memory bugs that were problems with Windows, but those were at huge (for the time) amounts of memory. SchmuckyTheCat 08:13, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] USB Support in Windows 98?

Does anybody think it may be worth adding a comment on USB Support for Windows 98?

USB Support, despite being used as a marketing buzzword in the OSR2 releases of Windows 95, was a bit sketchy and unreliable, and often required further adjustments and tweaks. Windows 98, however, supported USB 'out of the box', and I think this is one of the features that made it such an appealling upgrade.

Thanks.

MarkLeeUK 00:41, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Sketchy USB support in Detroit was a reason why it was OEM only. USB support was touted as a big deal in Windows 98 to both consumers and developers. Consumers so they could use devices, and developers because USB was one of the first native WDM drivers - one binary for both Win98 and the forthcoming Windows 2000. So sure, add it where appropriate.SchmuckyTheCat 08:10, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks for your help there Schmucky. I've added a very brief line to the Windows 98 description regarding USB support.

MarkLeeUK 03:16, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Windows NT 3.5 and Windows 2000 AS

The version of Windows NT 3.5 also exists, in addition to 4.0 and 3.1.

Windows 2000 Advanced Server (not sure about just the plain Server version) also includes a "Manage Your Server" page; this is not "new" to Windows Server 2003.

Jdstroy 06:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Windows NT 3.51 is mentioned in the article, though not as extensively as is deserved. The "Manage Your Server" role-based tool is a new feature in Windows Server 2003. There was a "Configure Your Server" wizard which did some of the same stuff, but as the name suggests, was more for initial configuration and not so much ongoing management. Warrens 06:55, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External link to "Brief History"

I only fixed the spelling mistake in the link ("breif" ==> "brief") but the article that the link points to is rife with opinion ("reign of terror") and misleading or inaccuarate statements ("Removing a floppy from your drive would crash the computer") but it's an external article, so not the purview of Wikipedia authors.

But the link to it is, and maybe the link should be removed? The content in the page linked to is not unique in any way from the content of other linked pages, or of this article for that matter. So it seems as though nothing is lost by removing the link.

Brianporter 18:47, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lisa or Macintosh?

In the movie Pirates of the silicon valley, it shows Bill telling his team that he wants a GUI. When he is telling them that, he is currently using a Lisa.

If i remember correctly, Lisa was a codename Macintosh was using at the time, if that's what your asking. --Nsbendel 19:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I thought Lisa was a different computer released by Apple altogether, and they dumped it after Lisa 2?

[edit] Windows "Fiji"

Is anybody writing anything to address "Fiji"? Although it is questioned whether or not it is an update to Vista or a standalone OS to preceed Vienna, it should be addressed. Just wanted to give somebody a chance to reply if they are already working on it. --Nsbendel 19:18, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Windows 98 Crash paragraph

Added 00:52, 16 October 2006 by 194.66.199.249 →Windows 98

When Bill Gates and his assistant demonstrated Windows 98's USB capability by pluggin in a USB Scanner, the computer crashed, showing the Blue Screen of Death.

While I am not disputing that this happened, a source is not cited and the statement does not flow with the structure of the section. It seems out of place and should be integrated into the existing text with the proper source cited.

  • I remember this incident, and used to have a film clip. Some diligent searching ought to find a source. A-ha, here we go, Chicago Comdex keynote address, 1998.[1][2] ... Still, as it happened to one person, once, in a public venue, doesn't make it notable for this kind of article, does it? I don't think so. YMMV. David Spalding Talk/Contribs 17:24, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NT = New Technology?

I saw somewhere that NT stands for New Technology? (I think it was on the NT startup screen) Anyone know if this is true?

[3] SchmuckyTheCat 22:52, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
   Some say it's New Technology, I've heard it's Network Technology, but I'm not entirely sure.
   Blasterman 95 23:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)Blasterman 95

[edit] Windows for Workgroups 3.0?

I saw something on the History ow MS windows, and it mentioned that the Multi-User windows started with a WfW version 3.00. Could someone confirm this? If it can be confirmed, maybe we should add it to the article, and update the picture.

Blasterman 95 23:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)Blasterman_95

[edit] XP MCE root

This graphic suggests that Windows XP MCE is derrived from Windows XP Home Edition. However, I believe that I have read on the MS website that XP MCE is built off of the Windows XP Pro code base. For example, whereas on XP home you cannot use gpedit or most other MMC snapins, in XP MCE, like XP pro, you can. There are other "bits and pieces", so to speak, of XP Pro on an XP MCE computer, such as the Tour Windows XP, which thinks the computer is running XP pro. If the person who posted the graphic could explain their reasoning, and update the chart, if necessary, to reflct that XP MCE is derived from Windows XP pro and Windows XP home I would appreciate it. --Tech Nerd 04:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

It is based on Pro, when you have Windows display it's version number it says Windows Xp Professional Build blah blah blah... MAybe it should be switched to that line one instead.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../h/i/s/Talk%7EHistory_of_Microsoft_Windows_2c98.html"